


Different Lies

by water_lotus



Category: Death Note
Genre: F/M, General fiction, Literature, fan fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-15
Updated: 2016-10-15
Packaged: 2018-08-22 12:22:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8285687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/water_lotus/pseuds/water_lotus
Summary: 「 For once, she regrets something. Something she never said. And never will now. 」





	

Being a genius didn’t mean _shit_.

 

It was restless nights and bouts of insomnia rustling sheet covers; stirring thoughts awake at hours at which others were otherwise unconscious in a comatose of dreams. It included fatigue-washed eyes and hypersensitivity that every person alive around you was either just as insane as you, or the complete opposite. It was never being able to completely open up to people, nor trust them.

It was the in way she felt comfortable around him, but knew, in the deep logical portion of her heart she loathed, that it would never last.

 

It consisted of dazed mornings waking up beside him and sweets on shared plates; of lazy shrugs and silent conversations with a roll of her eyes or a dent in his eyebrows. There were hesitant gestures of affection-though always in private- that almost shouldn’t be allowed for people of their kind.

 

_Their kind._

 

That’s a joke. They weren’t anything particular. They were hidden faces and unknown alias of a 404 error code in a search bar. Ending revolutions and passing by without a glance.

  
  


It’s already coming down to six am, a full three hours since she woke, having only been able to shut her eyes for a little over an hour’s time. Why hadn’t she ever said something before? Neither of them said anything.

Maybe it wasn’t necessary. It could have been hiding in the morning’s early glint in his eyes when she woke or when she reprimanded him in her sarcastic wits, despite her endless blush. Maybe it didn’t need to be vocalized; it may have been his weekly, sometimes daily, calls to her just to make sure she was alive. Other times, it was to invite her on a case or inquire about her whereabouts to proceed in purchasing the fastest mode of transportation to meetup. It was popping up out of the blue sometimes, even though it scared her half to death! Or conversations about sweets or pride and jealousy games to see who had the better (or worse) case and suspects. It could have been all the little things that said it better than either of them ever could.

 

Maybe it was his worry turned to anger that drove her out of Japan without explanation or warning, similar to the way he died weeks later . Had she known at that time, it seemed very likely that it, too, was an example of all the things they never said.

 

There’s no movement in the night sky within the glassy reflection from her panel windows of the rented suite. The life of the city has come to a roaring halt in the quiet hours of morning with few men and women commuting to work in the grim hours just before sunrise. She can’t bring herself to the small kitchenette adjacent to her miniature couch and living area. So far, she’s done nothing beside reside in the drama streaming on her television, of which she less than barely paid any attention to in the process. She hasn’t an idea when the last time she ate was, but she can’t find an ounce of desire in her to solve why exactly she is like this.

Somehow, she just knows without thinking about it too much.

  


 

Emotional outlets were not so much encouraged in her kind of professionalism, moreso seen as a side-effect of noncommitment to her sort of work, and the things that came with it. Those that she did partake in most especially frowned upon, both on a moral perspective as well as being said to be ‘contradictory to that of which she is a force of’. How funny; Cassandra used to laugh dryly at comments such as these.

 

Whatever it was she chose to drink in attempts to wash down feelings and memories, whatever she ate while wasting away days in the stares of confining four-walls, or whomever it was she consented to do things with was entirely her own. No, she was her own supernova held within a nebula of things that stitched her together and kept her progressing throughout each day. Things others couldn’t- or did not bother to- understand.

 

But _he_ was a form of some kind hidden between the gaps of that poorly-made nebula, torn up between other things she never took a second glance at or reconsidered. She was never hesitant about things. But the things she thought twice about were considered _deadly_.

 

Maybe that’s the reason she felt so empty inside at the thought of him. Perhaps her own second-guessing of him was even more painful than ever before.

 

Perhaps it would have been better to think about it before.

Before all of this.

  
•••

 

“What the  _fuck_ was that!?”

 

“..You were there, I’m sure you were paying attention-”

“Why did you tell them I was leaving for an ‘urgent case’!” She’s fuming. She knows he is playing with her. And yet he’s standing there chewing on his next words like he doesn’t understand her anger, but she knows perfectly well he can understand the venom seeping from her lungs. “We are _this_ close to actually getting somewhere with this case, and suddenly you announce that I’m leaving? As if you don’t ‘require my assistance’ any more!”

 

He picks for his next words like an old scar, with peeling hesitation that relays his message from fully getting across. But he just cannot stop staring at her.

 

“You’re not going to say anything. You had a lot to say earlier-”

 

“I’m sorry. I should have confronted you and talked about this with you before, but…” Again, the nit-picky words are like pebbles in the sand that he’s lost to the tidal wave crashing into the shore.

“But what,” Cassandra finally cries and he’s forced to actually, finally _look_ at her. At her honey strands making their grand escape from her tied back hair, her bespeckled irises cratered by olive and chocolate constellations, even her wrinkled jeans and bare feet that match up to her worn sweatshirt. All of her.

 

“...I’ve already booked a flight for you. I can always have your things shipped to your safehouse, and the case file for Monaco is already in your inbox.”

Unbelieveable.

She doesn’t even have the words appropriate for him as a response. What exactly would be appropriate at this point after what he’s said?

 

“I don’t believe you. Are you that stupid?”

No one’s ever called him that. To be fair, neither has she.

He clears his throat to overcome the sudden throw she sends his way with the inquiry that halts him for a fraction of a second. He doesn’t look at her again.

 

“I know this is short notice, but I am now aware that you’re help in this case has been of great assistance and will now allow me to further finish it without the need of your precious time.”

 

“That’s such B.S., and you know it.” She doesn’t stop looking at him. “Tell me,” she wants to scream, but even if she’s assured that these walls are soundproof she won’t. Because she’s barely biting back verses of yelling and wells of confined tears due to her pride swallowing her. She will not let him see her cry, she will not-

 

“There is nothing more to say.”

 

“...You’re..afraid, aren’t you?” He stiffens. She should stop. “Fine,” she acquiesces through a mutter, “I’ll leave. I’ll take your shitty cover-up and I’ll walk out of here knowing that you know perfectly well you’re lying to me. If you need my help, which apparently you won’t, you know where I’ll be.”

 

He was so afraid. So terrified of uncertainties in the world he would have once believed to be myths. Of people that were too much like himself, that way he could never fully decipher them because of that sole fact.

He was scared of the things to come, having already a taste of what’s previously occurred.

He was afraid to risk things. Things he was not fully sure about were risks and considered dangerous. Unethical, in his book. Unprofessional to others. This was a risk he was going to take, and it would take him down with it.

 

But Cassandra Than would lie awake at night and _burn_ with the vague knowledge that she _knew_ somewhere in the worn crevices of her anatomical heart that L had lied. And she took it like that. And her lungs would collapse as she burned and her chest would concave inwards with the thought that it was all her fault.

Because she was the risk without certainty that had brought him down, too.

She would always know in her own mind that those words were nothing but slips to cover up the truth that he was afraid, afraid of the unforeseeable future that was inevitable. Somehow, still, he just knew.

And soon enough, Cassandra would know, too.

•••

 

It would be approximately eleven weeks after her departure from Japan that Cassandra would come to face the centre of her own supernova alone and up close. The dusts and clouds shrouding him in her own nebula were no longer in existence. All that was left was a message in her inbox that, after a process of decoding and breaking various firewalls, left her utterly alone.

 

It wasn’t as if Cassandra Than was ever really accompanied by others. Rarely was she actually ever affiliated with anyone or anything in her recent adult years. But something so cliche and superficial was found in the feeling of waking up close to someone who could understand.

 

An hour of unraveling tangled codes and blocks that only she could work past left her with L's solution:

> I took a risk. One of which I had never even calculated the success rate of. Perhaps I had known from the beginning there was none. There was one success though.
> 
> You.
> 
> The passport and plane ticket I left to you were bought just minutes before I announced to the Task Force of your departure. My recent discoveries and unexplained phenomenon revealed to us both during our search were all causes that led to one single purpose. I had originally requested for your assistance towards that cause, for I was unable to fathom such a fabricated lie that was told to me. However, you and I will both always know it was true and real and unavoidably unexplainable.
> 
>  
> 
> Yes, I was afraid. My fear led me to buying a plane ticket and forcing you out of that fantasy that was far too illogical and terrorizing.
> 
> And for that I lied to you. I knew you would not believe me, but maybe that was my intention all along. For you to understand without me saying. That was, in fact, the basis of our standing with one another, was it not?
> 
> Perhaps the L stands for liar.
> 
> This, however, is no lie: You were my risk. My very own with which I did not even consider up until that day.
> 
>  
> 
> My days are dwindling. This I am sure of. If it is true, I would like to believe in the lie that you might actually still be here. But this is false and I am mistaken.
> 
>  
> 
> Finish it.

  
  


Cassandra Than’s nebula has collapsed. And even those words left to her disappear not long after.

Just as before, she knows a lie when it is told.

This is not one of them.

•••

 

He won’t stop staring at her.

He never takes his eyes off her.

 

“What, L,” she moans through a forkful of breakfast, which just so happens to be French toast in all of it’s cinnamon-milk-egg glory. She obviously knows he’s staring, even if she’s not even looking in his direction. Cassandra would much rather be sleeping away her mild body aches and leftover feelings of victory for their most recent work, but she persists through the remainder of cases she knows has piled up while tackling through her first mug of coffee.

 

He should do the same.

It’s a strange sight, since it would normally be Lawliet doing the early-bird work rather than how she continues to purge herself of whatever energy she has over the laptop.

For once, he genuinely feels as if the only thing he desires to do at the current moment is sleep. Perhaps this is what people would call an “out-of-body” moment. As if he has awoken with an entirely different persona. But the matter of the fact is that he doesn’t care and still peers lamely at the girl through slitted eyes under shaggy bangs.

 

Suddenly, _she’s_ the one now looking at _him_. And it’s with that curious yet oh-so familiar glint in her eyes that she stops in the method of her mundane chewing and swallows just to stare back at him in more silence.

“You were...different, last night.” As if it’s not the strangest thing to say to an active partner the morning after.

 

“..You were too.” She’s just as bad, though. Maybe it was her glee in finally closing the case, the satisfied grin that she lazily adorned on her cheeks, or the lack of stimulant. Whatever it was between them, it was mutual, as was stated to be apparent by them both.

 

It wouldn’t be too bad of an experience to try again, right?

  
  


Maybe it was something that represented words never said between them. Words that were only ever whispered in fantasy lands that did not exist to either of their logical-based minds. A place that was beyond their brand of professionalism and never mutually promised upon.

 But it was something she should have said before it was too late.


End file.
